The Day After Tomorrow 2.5 MT

So I saw this movie when it was released and thought it was kind of silly, but the other day I was in the gym and it was on the tele while I was on the treadmill. The sound was off, and I was only doing a warm up, so I didn't see the whole movie, and it's been slated elsewhere so I don't need to go into detail here, but I did see the scene where Dennis Quaid's character, Jack Hall, shows he's the luckiest guy alive.

Remember when he and his buddies are walking across the frozen tundra that turns out to be a glass atrium roof, and the sled falls through, and the guy at the back falls through, and Jack Hall pulls a (climbing) ice axe out of nowhere and arrests the falls by slamming it into the ground?

Well, he's damned lucky that on that vast glass roof he was on he didn't actually slam the axe into glass. He must have hit the one spot of actual ice as you then see him brush away about an inch of fresh powder from the glass so he can look through to see his mate cut the rope on himself for the greater good.

I really hope he got up from that and went straight to the newsagent to buy a lottery ticket. It's as if he'd just had a shot of the luck virus from Red Dwarf.

I haven't seen the film in 10 years. I think it was vaguely entertaining. 2.5 Money Trains.

Gravity - 0 MT

You know how movie titles normally relate to the movie in some way? For example, "Takers" is about people who take stuff. "Money Train" is about a train full of money. "Star Wars" is about terrorists fighting to overcome the established power because they want to live by their religion's strict and exclusionist doctrine without presenting any kind of alternative system of government or proposed law ever in the whole trilogy... but up in space.

Well, by that rationale, "Gravity" should really be called "Gumby astronaut on the point of hyperventilating panic for the entire damned movie". It should not be named after something that is conspicuously absent from the movie. It's like calling it "Rainbow Slushy" since slushies also fail to feature in this movie.

Sandra Bullock plays Ryan Stone, because heroes and heroines can't have girly names, like Daisy Lillie, they have to be tough sounding, like Brick Steele or Matt Kowalski (George Clooney's character), or Taylor Nails, even if they carry on like Precious Moonbeam Waters for 100% of the movie.

Anyway, Ryan (not-a-man) Stone is some computer geek fixing the Hubble Telescope with her pals when space junk happens by destroying everything. Thankfully, (from an accurate science point of view), there is no noise but everyone and most everything except her and her pal stone-cold Kowalski get destroyed. After stopping Stone hurtling into space, Kowalski helps her as they float their way to the International Space Station. And here's where I get worked up enough to write about this movie.

You see, the two astronauts are tethered together and they hurtle towards the ISS at a frightening speed but Stone manages to hold onto it before they shoot by, stopping dead, hence stopping Kowalski as well, who is in front of her in their crazy orbit (which can be thought of as being below her because being in orbit is about falling and missing the Earth). Now, they've stopped, meaning an equal and opposite force has been applied to their motion, and they should hence be safe, all falling towards Earth (and missing) at the same rate. Which means that relative to the ISS they're just floating. Which Stone is. And yet something is still pulling them harder than the ISS. Some mysterious, previously unknown gravity-like force, really, which inspires Kowalski to make like so many others dangling on ropes before him: he lets go and flies off into a non-Newtonian demise.

This leaves our heroine with no air left save what's in her suit, but the determination not to let Matt's death be for (astro)naught (boom boom!) So she finds a side door to the ISS, comes in, breathes the sweet, sweet air of salvation, and then sets the damned thing on fire. No joke.

So this means she has to jump over to some Chinese space station, or something improbable like that, which she does. She then flukes the right control sequence in the escape pod (the manual is in Chinese) and fires herself back to Earth where she lands in a lake. She then sinks the escape pod, before wandering aimlessly away from the only device with a homing beacon on it.

In short, Ryan Stone is a liability who cost a seasoned astronaut his life, burnt down the ISS, sank a Chinese pod, and then wandered off to die alone in the barren wastelands of Wherethefuckistan, where she landed. Quite why this film won so many awards is beyond me.

0 Money Trains, as this matches the score description to the right to a tee.

Takers -0.5 Money Trains

It's been a long time between reviews, partly due to other commitments (eg, baby), and party due to not seeing enough truly terrible films. And then when I do I let them fester awhile so the worst bits rise to the top, like some kind of cinematic cream. Only the kind of cream that's sour. And comes from rats. 

So without further ado, let me present the following review / plot summary.

TAKERS (2010) -0.5 Money Trains

Takers is a bit of strange film. It seemingly had a big, mainstream Hollywood budget, but they didn't choose to spend too much of that cash on actors. True, there was Matt Dillon, Annikin Skywalker, and that other Walker from Fast and Furious. But then there were some complete nobodies who had no place in front, behind, or within a half mile radius of a camera. (Subsequent research revealed many of these people to be R&B singers, like Chris Brown, famous more for beating seven shades of shit out of his ex girlfriend than for his music, I believe, plus an English DJ and some other no-hoper who you'd expect to have diamond teeth.)

But the plot, if you could call it that, is what sets this film apart. Firstly, it is, (apparently - thanks, IMDB), a rip off of Heat, Michael Mann's over-long snore-fest which I'd blocked from my memory. Secondly, it is one of those films where you want to yell at the screen: "For god's sake, do X, Y and Z and all the problems are solved." So a bit like a John Cleese movie with automatic weapons. 

OK, if you've also blocked Heat, and want an idea of the plot, Takers is like this: there's a gang of bank robbers, (they TAKE, hence the title), who are wildly successful because they follow some simple rules:
1. Plan everything meticulously;
2. Wait at least a year between jobs;
3. Only work with those you trust. 

The gang is (and I'm going to make up my own names here): 
Paul Walker (Fast and Furious) who is maybe some kind of leader, being white and not a total dropkick;
Hayden "Annikin Skywalker" Christiansen who tries to play a cool, pork-pie hat wearing, jazz piano playing hardman. Who's small and skinny. Face it, Annikin, only Gene Hackman (and real jazz pianists) look cool in pork-pie hats;
Black guy 1, who runs a jazz bar. Wait, that's not cool, let's call him Johnny;
Chris Brown, aka Black Guy 2, who is Johnny's younger brother. Let's call him Jimmy;
English Black Guy, let's call him Guv'nor, cause he's got that kind of accent.

So these guys pull off a really cool heist, and you think, wicked, awesome film ahead. Then an ex gang member (let's say Freddie) gets out of jail and comes to them with a proposition: rob an armoured car in 3 days time. 

Now, no-one in the gang, and I mean no-one, trusts Freddie. And three days is not very long, and it's only a few days since the last job, so the cops are on the look out. Take a second to look back at the above rules and then decide if they all deserve everything that's coming to them.

What comes, of course, is a mix of Russian mobsters (thank's to Freddie's inevitable double cross) and the cops. Or cop, played by Matt Dillon (we'll call him Matt), clearly struggling with two unnecessary subplots about the daughter he never sees and the partner who's on the take. 

Matt, thanks to a bit of a fluke involving Guv'nor's drug-addled sister, gets on the Guv'nor's tail, but not in time to prevent the heist. And this is where it gets mind blowingly stupid: Jimmy is nearly caught by the cops because he runs when he sees them coming for him, even though they have no idea who he is. They suspect, but nothing more. Stupid thing 1. 

So Jimmy hightails to the rendezvous, minus the bag of money, (which is never seen again, mind you), just in time for Freddie to arrange the double cross and escape through a window. All hell breaks loose as the Russian's move in, but on the whole, the gang gets out. More or less. Specifically, less.

Jimmy and Johnny head back to the bar, and the Guv'nor heads to his luxury apartment. Matt heads alone to the guv'nor's apartment, since he is, remember, the only one the cops actually know about. The only one. Yet Matt's alone. Stupid thing 2.

Meanwhile, the entire LA SWAT team rolls up at the jazz bar, despite not having a clue that these guys are in any way involved. (Stupid thing 3). So what do Johnny and Jimmy do? Well, in that situation, my options would probably look like this:
1. Invite the police in, as they can't feasibly be onto me;
2. Slip out the back as the police have only gone to the front door.
3-999,999,999. Anything else other than pick up some guns full of ammo and burst out the front door shooting at the police and getting killed. 

Jimmy and Johhny go for option 1 billion. (Stupid thing 4 and 5, since there are two of them.)

So now Paul and Guv'nor, being the only surivors, (but not actually knowing this) go to hop on their private plane which Freddie is about to steal, along with the loot. Not so fast, shouts Matt, emerging from the shadows. I'm a cop. He is, of course, facing three gun-toting criminals and is still alone. Stupid thing 6.

Mexican standoff? Hell no, everyone just shoots after a few seconds and everyone, except teflon-Paul, cops a bullet. 

So what you realise here is that the whole police side of the story is one big failure. Matt manages to identify a key gang member but rather than get help apprehending him, gets shot and lets him get away. (stupid thing 7, and Stupid thing 1 was only about 15 minutes ago.)

All up, this film is dreadful. Not Dolemite dreadful, but dreadful nonetheless. Avoid it. -0.5 Money Trains.